


Pop Culture vs Reality

by NervousOtaku



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguously gendered narrator, Compare and Contrast, The Necronomicon, descriptions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 12:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NervousOtaku/pseuds/NervousOtaku
Summary: Pop culture seems to overexaggerate solely to hype people up.





	Pop Culture vs Reality

**Author's Note:**

> For my mom, who is getting tired of stereotypical eldritch happenings in pop culture.

In pop culture, the Necronomicon is often depicted as a huge, heavy book, worn and battered. It's bound in unspeakable material, often with carvings, engravings, or embedded items. Sometimes there are chains or locks. Maybe it has a face, leering at those who would dare to read it.

I don't know about those, but my copy appears as a travel-size Moleskine notebook with a black cover. The pages are a little yellowed, and there's a lot of brightly colored little sticky-notes marking certain pages. There's also a blue erasable pen jammed into it.

I dunno. It came that way.

But despite looking like the average guy's book of names, the pages are full of unspeakable things. I don't entirely understand all of it yet. Squirming runes that slowly merge with vivid and grotesque illustrations, likenesses of beasts that make gods cower in fear, and evenly pulsing spatters migrating across the pages fill it. Every time I've read it, I hear a faint murmur, like thousands of voices jabbering and gargling at the bottom of a huge hole. I also get the sensation of standing at the edge of said huge hole, on the verge of falling in as something stares and drips cold acid down my spine with it's gaze.

I don't honestly remember how I got the damn thing. I just woke up one day and realized I'd been carrying around this weird notebook for ages. Confused, I opened it up and read a passage or two. I probably found it at work or something, if I'm being rational.

And after reading those passages, I gained the ability to see death.

In pop culture, death often appears as a tall, gaunt skeleton in a black robe, wielding a scythe. Maybe it's an old man, grizzly and decrepit. Sometimes it has death wearing a mask. It tends to be a singular, universal being.

In actuality, everyone has their own personal death. They appear differently from person to person, with different personalities and behaviors, but all of them cling to their person. One of my coworkers has the most stuck-up red owl always on her shoulder. My textiles professor has a large dog made of tar that sleeps in front of the radiator. I've only seen two that look anything remotely like the popular thing, trailing after an elderly couple. Mine happens to look like a creepy little doll. I can't tell the gender, but it doesn't object to the male designation I've stuck it with. He has a small body, pitch black with the upper half of his skeleton appearing to show through in bright white. His limbs are long and thin, sticklike but also noodlelike, and his hands can best be described as spidery. His face is snow-white, with huge black eyes, a hollowed-out nose, and a stitched-up cat-like mouth. He has this mass of hair, like a cloud that follows him around, and I'm pretty sure it's alive. It's black, fitting his monochrome scheme. In a way, he reminds me of Dio de los Muertos dolls.

I don't know what he did before my reading the Necronomicon, but he's apparently decided that since I can see him now, I also need to take care of him. He clings to my thigh and rides around like that when I'm going to class or work, but as soon as I get home, he drops to the floor and wanders around, wailing. He acts like this until I feed him or something like that. I usually do it just to shut him up, because damn, can that repetitive ‘Aaaaaah!’ get annoying. To feed him, I usually just fill up a small plastic cup with candy, but sometimes I get pudding, jello, applesauce, or cookies. His favorite foods are jelly beans and taffy. He has his own bed, too. It's a cat-bed I found a design for online, made to look like a fish that eats the cat. I picked out the spookiest fabrics I could when making it, and he seems to like it.

In pop culture, priests of the eldritch beings are often shady, deformed, scarred, or possessed. They tend to wear rough cloth robes, speak in uneven voices, and work in caves or abandoned buildings. You usually see huge cult followings behind them, performing all kinds of cruel sacrifices and bizarre rituals. Most of them are some form of crazy.

I don't know about them.

But I'm an average person, working part-time at a thrift-store and majoring in childcare and early development, with a minor in design. I've yet to actually sacrifice anything, perform any rituals, or go insane. I currently live in a small apartment, and the only following I have is on my Pinterest, which is dedicated to creative things to do for and with kids. People really like my easy-wash edible paint recipe and my yogurt-filled muffins.

Pop culture seems to just overexaggerate in order to hype people up.

As my death's thin wailing starts again, I look up from the Necronomicon, blinking away the hands and dancing hieroglyphs. The stories these things tell are so varied, you never know if you're going to get some gruesome ritual or Lovecraftian gossip.

He's standing next to my Xbox, threatening to stick his fingers in the wall-socket again. I've never actually let him do it, a tad bit nervous to find out what happens when he does.

“Alright, alright,” I sigh, checking the time, “We can play something, but then I have psych homework.”

He grins as much as he can with his mouth stitched shut, spidery hands already grabbing the player one controller.

Pop culture definitely doesn't know how far off it is.


End file.
